CAIRO – 10 February 2020: Egypt jumped up six positions in Agility Emerging Markets Index 2020, reaching the 20th place.
According to the index, despite a brief social unrest in 2019, Egypt’s economy showed surprising gains in key areas and moved up six sports to #20 in the overall index.
“Egypt actually gained six spots in the 2020 Index and showed improvement in the domestic and international logistics opportunities and business fundamentals indices,” CEO and President of Agility Global Integrated Logistics Essa al-Saleh stated in the report.
The report pointed out that Egypt has made rapid progress because of economic growth. The government successfully implemented a first wave of macroeconomic and structural reforms that addressed many entrenched issues and helped to stabilize the economy, spur growth and lay the groundwork for robust private sector participation in the economy.
“Smaller markets can make progress up the rankings if they display solid fundamentals, either economic or in terms of openness to trade (such as Egypt),” CEO Transport Intelligence (TI) John Manners-Bell said.
In domestic logistic opportunities, Egypt and Thailand both leapt six spots to 13th and 14th respectively. Egypt and Nigeria have made significant progress because of economic growth, infrastructure upgrades and improved domestic demand.
“In Egypt, whose rankings in each of the three sub-Indices saw rise, GDP growth is expected to quicken to 5.5 percent in 2019. Strong performance from the energy, retail and construction sectors are leading the growth, with underlying reforms that followed a $12 billion IMF loan in 2016, helping to improve private sector cash flows and stabilize fuel costs. Forecast growth in Egypt’s contract logistics and domestic express markets are relatively low, highlighting the potential for further gains in the coming years,” according to the index.
The index revealed that Egypt has engineered one of the most remarkable turns of economic fortune in recent memory. It jumped six places to the 20th place in the 2020 Agility Emerging Markets Logistics Index, improving in all categories but most notably in business conditions, where it leaped up 10 spots to the 17th place.
“Egyptian GDP is forecast to grow 6 percent in 2020. Egypt has $96 billion in mega-projects and underway infrastructure work and another $240 billion in planning or pre-planning execution. Expansion of the Suez Canal, the Greater Cairo Monorail, the New Cairo development and construction of satellite cities near Cairo are among the showcase projects,” it said.
The index stated that much of the current work involves power projects and road construction associated with mega-projects.
The index also referred to progress occurred in Egypt since the implementation of the economic reform program in 2016.
“The austerity moves hurt Egyptian consumers and workers but won the confidence of the International Monetary Fund. Since then, structural reforms and an improved business environment have revived consumption and private-sector investment," it added.
Agility Emerging Markets Logistics Index is an annual snapshot of industry sentiment and a ranking of the world's 50 leading emerging markets by size, business conditions, infrastructure and transport connections
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